People who were not entirely pleased with the performance of AMD’s E-series Brazos and Brazos 2.0 systems will be happy to know that Kabini can offer a significant performance increase over Brazos 2.0.

Kabini based ultrathins and small form factor machines are expected in the first half of 2013. As far as we know from multiple sources who would like to remain anonymous the launch date is set around Computex (June 4 to 8th 2013). In PCMark Vantage, measured by AMD labs, a Kabini based A6-5200 system scored 5271, while a Brazos APU-based system scored 2807. This is a dramatic performance increase that will bring smiles on many faces.

The Kabini configuration used in the tests is based on AMD’s Larne reference design. It is powered by an A6 5200 APU with Radeon HD 8400 graphics, 4GB DDR3 1600 memory as well as Windows 8 64-bit. The Brazos system was based on the reference Renmore platform, powered by an E2 1800 APU, Radeon HD 7340 graphics, 4GB DDR3 1333 memory and Windows 7 Ultimate.

Despite this significant performance increase, battery life won’t suffer as AMD promises 10 hours battery life at least in idle mode. It is not clear what kind of battery, display, brightness was AMD using but in its real life measurement, but the performance should get much closer to Intel’s current generation Core I 17W mobile processors used in Ultrabooks.

With a few nice design wins and a lot of marketing, AMD has a chance to remind the market that it is still a company that can offer competitive products including ultrathins and small form factor machines. Jaguar is a tiny core, so the chips shouldn’t end up pricey, which is not the case with Intel’s 17W parts.

We don’t have the clocks yet, but we managed to get five names of AMD's new desktop low power processors codenamed Kabini.

Kabini has two to four Jaguar cores, AMD Turbo Core overclocking, Radeon HD 8000 series graphics, DirectX 11.1 support, up to DDR3 1866 and comes in FT3 BGA package. The role of Kabini is to replace outdated Zacate E series of APUs.

The top of the line is X4 5110 that features HD 8310G graphics core and with its four cores it manages to stay under 25W TDP. The runner up is the X4 4410 that features the same HD 8310G graphics but much lower 15W TDP.

The third processor of this line is X2 3450 with HD 8280, slower graphics and most likely two CPU cores that operates under 15W TDP. The first three processors are starting production in the latter part of Q1 2013, but the official launch is expected in June, most likely at Computex in late May or early June 2013.

The last two Kabinis to launch are named E1 3310 and E1 2210. They look like the direct replacement for existing Brazos 2.0 E2 2000 and E2 1500 processors. The E1 3310 has HD 8240G graphics and 15W TDP. The last part on the Kabini desktop APU list is the E1 2210 and we don’t even have the TDP details about this part.

The only additional thing we can tell about this CPU is that production ready samples are expected in March 2013 and shortly after we can expect the start of volume production. Both Kabini E series processors are expected to launch in June 2013.

AMD’s no frills Kabini APU is set to appear in a few months and it could be one of the more significant chips to roll out of AMD next year.

We already reported that AMD plans to introduce E-series and X-series chips, with the X4 5110 pegged as the top quad-core SKU. It’s a 25W part manufactured in 28nm, but we still don’t know the clocks. Thanks to forum member over at Anandtech who unearthed an interesting Q&A video, we now have some official info. However, rather than answering any questions, the video raises a few new ones.

The video apparently shows Jeff Rupley, head of Jaguar development at AMD, talking about his baby. Long story short, Rupley told the crowd that the new architecture will deliver more than a 10-percent micro-architectural frequency gain versus Bobcat in 28nm. We heard similar comparisons from AMD reps before, but we assumed they were referring to 40nm Bobcat parts, not 28nm chips. IPC performance should be 15 percent higher, so clock-per-clock is should blow Bobcat out of the water. However, the comparison doesn’t tell us much since AMD ditched Wichita and we never got to see it in action.

So that’s question number one. The fastest 40nm Bobcat part, the E2-1800, runs at 1.7GHz. That doesn’t help much, since the 28nm version was expected to feature higher clocks. A 10-percent increase over the existing 40nm Bobcats translates into 1.9GHz+, but since AMD is apparently comparing Jaguar to 28nm Bobcat, the clock could end up higher, possibly even quite a bit higher. We just don’t know yet.

The second issue is Turbo Core. Bobcat doesn’t have it, but Kabini does and we need to factor it into the equation. Depending on the base clock and a range of other factors, Turbo Core 3.0 can push Trinity clocks 300MHz to 900MHz higher. Even in quad-core Trinity ULV parts, with 17W and 25W TDPs, Turbo accounts for an 800MHz boost. Jaguar probably won’t come close to an 800MHz Turbo boost, but it’s an intriguing possibility nonetheless.

Now cue the speculation. My money is on 1.8GHz/2.2GHz for the fastest Kabini quad-core SKU. Optimists will probably go for 1.6GHz/2.4GHz, but I think that's too, er, optimistic.

Kabini is AMD’s next generation entry level APU set to replace Brazos and Brazos 2.0 in the essential desktop market. Kabini 28nm will come in two flavours, X Series and E Series.

The top notch processor is called X4 5110 and it rocks a TDP of 25W. There will be some 18W parts as well. They all use Jaguar cores, have DirectX 11.1 graphics and use the FT3 BGA infrastructure. The Kabini APU branded as X4 5110 supports DDR3 1866 as well as Turbo Core.

You will need a board with Yangtze FCH chipset to get it going. Our sources tell us that the graphics that will get this chip going is branded as HD 8310G. Currently we know that the launch is scheduled for June but some additional information that we gathered so far might indicate that the X4 5110 might come out even before the end of Q1 2013.

Sources close to AMD indicate that production ready silicon should be ready in March 2013, or very late Q1 2013, but full volume production with hundreds of thousand, or millions of chips is more likely to happen in June.

Unfortunately we don’t have exact clock speeds just yet, and this part of the spec will probably be revealed as the launch date draws closer.

The E2-2000 was supposed to launch in Q4 2012, but we have learned that this won’t be the case. The 1.7GHz dual core E2 1800 will remain the fastest in this segment, at least this year. The dual-core E2 2000 features, 18W TDP, 1.75GHz core clock, 1MB cache, HD7340 integrated Radeon graphics with 80 cores, clocked at 538MHz stock and 700MHz with boost.

This platform supports DDR3 1333 but unofficially it will work with other faster memory breeds. This processor supports AMD Turbo Core, but only for graphics as the CPU part already maxes out the 18W TDP.

This E2 2000 is only 50MHz faster than currently available E2 1800 and it represents a mild performance boost just to keep AMD floating until the next generation E series comes in 2013.

The second processor is simply called E1 1500 and it is meant to replace the E1 1200. The E1 1500 is again a dual-core, 18W TDP processor this time clocked at 1.48GHz, or 80MHz faster than E1 1200 and its graphics core works at 529MHz or 29MHz faster than the HD 7310 in E1 1200. Nothing to be excited about.

We still cannot figure AMD is holding these boys off, with such a marginal speed increase it should be easy to push new Brazos 2.0 processors to market.

Brazos 2.0 is supposed to last until some point in 2013 when AMD plans to reveal its 28nm based Kabini processors in dual- and quad-core variants, something to replace Brazos cores, so it is a long overdue part.

One of the biggest disadvantages of Brazos was lack of USB 3.0 and on some small systems such as Sapphire HD2 Mini PC, it was not that easy to integrate the USB 3.0 external controller leaving the system without increasingly important USB 3.0 support.

Brazos 2.0 with A68 chipset solved this problem as it brings two USB 3.0 and 8 USB 2.0 ports and it looks that Kabini 28nm successor chipset, codenamed Yangtze will continue the tradition.

Yangtze FCH has two SATA 6Gb/s ports, two USB 3.0 ports and an undisclosed number or USB 2.0 ports, SD/SDIO 3.0 support, something that some tablets or convertible designs might want to use as well as xHCI 1.0. There are probably some other features that AMD doesn’t want to reveal at this time, as Kabini is expected in mid-2013 at earliest.

2013 will be a year of many changes at AMD, but the rest of 2012 will be market in waiting for some delayed product including Vishara FX series CPUs and Trinity A series APUs in desktop.

AMD is telling the world+dog that its next generation Trinity APUs are already shipping and we should see the first products based on the new chips soon. Revamped Brazos 2.0 APUs are also shipping as we speak and OEMs started getting the first batches last quarter.

There is no word on exact launch availability dates yet, AMD is just saying that the new chips will be available globally soon. Given the fact that AMD plans to introduce the new APUs this quarter, and that OEMs have already started receiving them, the launch could be just a few weeks away.

We already roughly know what to expect in terms of performance and we know pricing will be competitive to say the least, but the chips to really look out for are low-voltage Trinity APUs, with 18W and 25W TDPs.

These parts are destined for ultrathin notebooks and although they won’t match Intel’s Ivy Bridge parts in terms of performance, they could open the door to dirt cheap ultrathins with relatively good performance, especially in the graphics department. A $500 Trinity ultrathin sounds like a very good deal any time of the day.

The humble Brazos platform was arguably AMD’s best product of 2011, both in terms of competiveness and the sheer number of design wins. From feature packed nettops and barebones, through cheap netbooks to dozens of ITX boards, Brazos managed to beat Intel’s Atom at its own game and seize an impressive chunk of the market, first and foremost thanks to superior value for money and some advanced features that Atoms can only dream of.

Small wonder, then, that long time ATI/AMD partner Sapphire was one of the first to embrace the new chips and offer them in micro-ITX flavour. Interestingly, the company offered Brazos boards, the Sapphire PURE White Fusion Mini we are testing today, and the PURE Fusion Mini, which offers a few additional features and relies on SO-DIMM memory rather than plain DDR3 modules. So, the White version is a simpler and cheaper design, which is by no means a bad thing. We are talking about frugal computing here, no need for bells and whistles, a decent price tag and feature set will do.

As far as the design goes, there is nothing out of the ordinary to report, it’s more or less your standard Brazos ITX board. However, a few of our staffers found it amusing that a board dubbed Pure White Fusion features a sleek black PCB, which made us think that someone at Sapphire has a healthy British sense of humour.

Although this is the cheaper of Sapphire’s two Brazos boards, and for that matter one of the cheapest ones on the market, the designers still managed to squeeze in solid-state capacitors without breaking the bank. However, the board lacks some features found on high-end Brazos products, including USB 3.0 and eSATA. Other than that, the specs are pretty much in line with the rest of the Brazos crowd: 1.6GHz E-350 APU with HD 6310 graphics, 2 DDR3 DIMM slots, 1 PCIe x16 slot (x4 in the real world), 4 external USB 2.0 ports and headers for four more, Ethernet, three audio jacks and video output is catered to by VGA, DVI and HDMI ports.

The APU is actively cooled by a tiny, but relatively quite fan, while the A50M chipset is cooled by a neat black heatsink. The layout is pretty straightforward, but it’s really not too important. Since we are talking about an integrated ITX board, consumers probably won’t be plugging too much stuff into it anyway. Speaking of which, BIOS options are rather limited, but then again few people would tinker with an ITX board and overclocking/underclocking support is uncommon on integrated ITX boards.

So, what’s missing on this entry level board? As it turns out, not much. Of course, it would be nice to see USB 3.0 and eSATA, but at this price point you just can’t find an ITX board that has them. The same applies to onboard WiFi, which would have been a nice touch but it is still reserved for pricier models.

We guess a lot of people have old wireless USB adapters they can recycle anyway, but this means they will be down to three USB ports. A separate wireless keyboard and mouse combo will take up an additional two, which means there is just one left for external storage, or perhaps a TV tuner. Of course, you can use the extra USB headers for an additional four devices and it is always a good idea to check the layout of any ITX chassis you choose. Most feature two USB ports on the front, but some models sacrifice practicality for design, so the USB ports might be poorly placed or located under a flimsy plastic flap, which is hardly a good solution.

The layout is pretty straightforward and you shouldn’t have much trouble with the build. USB headers, LED and fan connectors should give you no trouble. The same applies to the four orange SATA 6Gbps ports, but you will find access to them a bit cramped in some chassis designs. Of course, this is a minor issue and few people will use more than two SATA ports anyway.

The placement of DIMM slots is unproblematic and the board supports up to 8GB of DDR3 1333 memory, which is more than enough for any HTPC.

The board also features a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (x4 electrically, of course). We guess most users won’t use it, but it could come in handy for some future upgrades. This is where AMD has a clear advantage over Intel. Brazos supports faster DDR3 memory, and more of it. Many cheap Atom boards still cling to DDR2, which is slower and twice as expensive as DDR3. In addition, Brazos boards ship with PCIe 2.0 and SATA 6Gbps support, offering greater flexibility and upgradeability. A couple of years down the road users can squeeze some extra performance from their Brazos rigs, with cheap-low profile discrete graphics or speedy SATA 6Gbps solid state storage, which really isn’t the case with Atom boards.

Performance

In terms of performance, the E-350 is hardly a new product and there is not much point in running a bunch of comprehensive tests. It’s faster than current generation Atoms, but bear in mind that Cedar Trail should be out any day now. Even AMD launched the updated E-450 a couple of months back, but there is a catch – you can’t actually buy any.

Cedar Trail, Intel’s much touted next generation 32nm Atom was supposed to launch in Q3 and retailers have been listing Intel’s first Cedar Trail boards for weeks, yet they are nowhere to be found. To some extent the same applies to E-450 products. They are available in a handful of netbooks, but not in micro-ITX format and the vast majority of Brazos products are still based on the good old E-350. Besides, the E-450 offers only a minor performance boost, so you really won’t be missing out on anything if you go for the E-350 instead.

There is no clear or simple explanation for this, although Intel faced some driver issues with Cedar Trail graphics, but we reckon it also has something to do with the sharp decline in netbook shipments and there is a chance both AMD and Intel are affraid of being stuck with inventories of old chips, so we wouldn’t hold our breath waiting for their successors.

Let’s kick off with the customary CPU-Z, GPU-Z and 3dmark06 screens.

Sadly, we couldn’t get our hands on any E-450 or Cedar Trail gear, so it is really hard to say how the E-350 stacks up against these upcoming platforms. We can only compare to it to Intel’s Atom D525 with ION2 graphics and another E-350 system from Zotac.

In most PCmark7 benches, the E-350 easily outpaces the Atom, apart from the creativity score, which favors the multithreded Atom.

To some extent this also applies to CineBench tests, the Atom does rather well, but only on account of HT support.

In Aida64, the Atom comes out on top on account of its superior FPU, HT and somewhat higher clock (1.86GHz vs. 1.6GHz)

The results might seem like a draw, but in real life applications Brazos will outperform any Atom system, regardless of clock, or the aid of Nvidia graphics. The E-350 simply delivers superior performance where it really counts when it comes to HTPCs. In graphics, browsing and even power consumption, it is somewhat superior to even the fastest Atom chips. Intel on the other hand has a clear advantage in heavily threaded applications and transcoding, which is really not your average HTPC workload, unless you plan to use iTunes on a daily basis.

Conclusion

We have no trouble recommending the PURE White Fusion to anyone looking for a Brazos board on a budget.

At €80 it is one of the cheapest E-350 boards on the market and only ASRock and Gigabyte offer comparable boards in terms of features, performance and pricing. For some reason US consumers will have a bit more trouble and a lot less choice if they opt for an entry-level Brazos board, as some of these boards are rather hard to come by across the pond.

So, it offers good value compared to its Brazos siblings, but what about cheap and abundant Atom boards? Well, it does not look good for Intel. The cheapest Atom D525 boards cost about €59, which sounds like a fair deal. However, they use either DDR2 or DDR3 SO-DIMM memory which negates much of the price advantage after you factor in, say 4GB of RAM. Furthermore, cheap Atom boards feature Intel GMA 3150 graphics, which should probably be banned by the UN Security Council as an affront to humanity. Basically you can forget about HDMI or DVI.

Only one scenario in which Atom D525 boards sans ION2 graphics should even be considered comes to mind – if you are looking for a silent, passively cooled office nettop that will never do anything remotely entertaining and you already have a VGA-only monitor on your desk. If this is not the case, and it probably isn’t, join the club and get a Brazos board.

According to a report over at Computerbase.de, AMD plans to refresh it Brazos lineup with Brazos 2.0 parts in Q1 2012. The second Brazos generation will also bring new names to both CPU and GPU parts.

Brazos 2.0 will feature updated Zacate APUs as well as higher clocked GPUs. The E-450 will get a replacement in the name of E2-1800. The CPU part practically remains the same deal except for slight boost in clock set at 1.7GHz. The GPU will be rebranded to HD 7430 and will end up clocked at 523MHz (680MHz with Turbo). The E2-1800 CPU part could also get a Turbo mode that should differentiate it from the E-450 part.

The E-300 part will be replaced by the E1-1200 clocked at 1.4GHz while the GPU part will be rebranded to HD 7310. Brazos 2.0 also brings a new mobile chipset, the A68M. The A68M looks like a cut back version of the A50M as it features only two SATA 6Gbps and eight USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports. It also comes with native DisplayPort support as well as RAID 0 and RAID 1 support. Of course, all of these cutbacks are meant to cut power consumption making the Brazos 2.0 platform ideal for those ultra-thin and netbook platforms.

The new addition is also the Brazos-T platform designed for tablets. This one is also scheduled for Q1 2012 and will use the A55T chipset combined with the Hondo APU. This combination should bring significantly lower power consumption when compared to the current Z-01 tablet APU platform.

The new Q1 2012 scheduled Brazos 2.0 platform will live until we see the 28nm Wichita and Krishna APUs scheduled for "later in 2012".

MSI has added, or rather updated its line of Wind Box nettops with a new DC100 based on AMD's Brazos platform.

The 191.8x150.93x34.94mm larger and 830g heavy DC100 features AMD's latest E-450 APU featuring two Bobcat cores that work at 1.65GHz and Radeon HD 6320 graphics part. The full list of specs include 2GB of memory that can be upgraded to 4GB, a 320GB HDD, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11bgn WiFi, 5.1-channel audio with optical SPDIF, D-Sub and HDMI outputs and a total of six USB 2.0 ports.

According to MSI's product page, the new DC100 has an average power consumptiom of 40W and runs very quietly, at below 22dB.

The new Wind Box DC100 will be shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. The price or the actual release date haven't been announced.